We all go a little mad sometimes.

Rasputin and other tales

My new favourite show is Scream Queens. It is such a ridiculous show, but I love and gleefully watch it every week. It is created by the same people who make my former favourite show American Horror Story and I am of the opinion that they transferred all of their screenwriting gift into this show, leaving AHS high and dry. Although to be fair, AHS peaked in season two and began a slow descent which hurtled towards zero this season. I stuck with the show out of loyalty and because of Lange-Basset-Peters-Paulson, but with this new season I said enough.

One thing I love(d) about AHS and now Scream Queens is that the writers include some piece of history. Usually it is a freaky story based on a true life event and I like going to research the new piece of information.

Here are some of the fascinating things I have learned.

Madame Delphine Lalaurie: Madame Lalaurie was a wealthy women who lived in New Orleans in the 1800s. She rose to infamy when a fire broke out at her house and her torture and brutalisation of her slaves was uncovered. The horrors that went on in that house made whipping seem like a friendly pat on the back. The slaves were caged, starved, mutilated; some were alive but missing limbs and vital organs. Even in an age when slavery and violence against slaves were de rigueur, her actions were considered despicable enough for her to skip town so as to escape the irate town folk. I had read about Madame Lalaurie before AHS, and it was interesting to see the story depicted on television. The house is still standing and if you are ever in New Orleans, be sure to check it out. Read more here.

Man with two faces: Legend has it that there once lived a man called Edward Mordake who had two faces; his normal one and an evil one at the back of his head. The extra face could not talk but Edward claimed that the face said disturbing, taunting things to him. He begged doctors to remove the face as it was driving him insane, but no one was willing to. He eventually killed himself at the age of 23.

This is supposedly him:

Rasputin: Apparently this was a character in Anastasia. Well I haven’t watched it so Scream Queens was the first place I heard of him. On the show, the characters’ attempts to kill their headteacher have been foiled, much to their chagrin. One of the characters then tells the tale of Rasputin, a Russian man who refused to die. As the story goes, he was poisoned and when he failed to show any effects, his host panicked and shot him in the back. Rasputin still did not die and he was shot at more times and was eventually beaten with a club, bound and thrown into the icy river. When his body was found, there were signs that he had tried to claw his way out of the ice. This is my favourite one because it is fairly recent, so much that one of his killers spoke about the murder in 1965. I also like it because it is more fact than legend, he was quite popular and there is a lot written about him and a lot of pictures, even pictures of his dead body.

Rasputin was thought to have healing powers and he developed a close relationship with the imperial Tsar and Tsarina of Russia. This relationship made people jealous and turned the public opinion of him from good to bad. Before he was murdered, a woman had made an attempt on his life. The most interesting thing about this was that the woman was said to have no nose. I found her picture

Cryotherapy: This is neither old nor freaky. The first time I heard of this therapy was when a woman who worked in a cryotherapy salon was found dead in one of the machines. Cryotherapy is the use of old subzero temperatures to treat certain ailments and with muscle repair. You may have seen athletes in ice baths, cryotherapy is an extreme version of that. Being the humans that we are, it has been turned into a vanity exercise which promises to burn calories and fix wrinkles. In Scream Queens, the characters attempt to murder their headteacher by locking her in the machine for ten minutes at a temperature of minus 100. She survives it though, like a boss.